Dublin!!!

---

Hallo from Dublin!! YAY!!!!!!!!!!!

It's a big city that's made of cement because there are few other resources. So it's not very pleasing to look at. I have lots of pictures of the cute little streets with shops, though. And a few of the big street we're on which is right on the Liffey. Very cool! Tomorrow we leave on a 6pm bus for Glendalough - I hear there's nothing there, but it's very pretty!

Updates updates updates....

We drove from Edinburgh to Glasgow a few nights ago to catch a flight to Dublin - it was the shortest flight any of us had been on. We went up and came down. 😊 Luckily I'm not one to get motion sickness, and I don't get sick generally, so my trip has been fantastic! One of us gets motion sickness very easily, another of us came on the trip with a bad bad bad cold, and a few of us have gotten mild colds since leaving the US. And the most recent discovery is Scabies (sp?)!!!!!!!! Little bed lice! Laura Peterson got them when we were at our Edinburgh hostel for 2 nights and she has a rash on her face, hands, elbows, chest, knees, and ankles. And the rash is lots and lots and millions and millions of tiny little eggs under her skin. Ick ick ick. So since I'm one of three others in the same hotel room with her again....I'm really hoping I don't catch the bugs! She got some ointment which should kill them within 24 hours, but then she'll itch for another week as they all somehow get out of her skin. Grosses me out. 😊

I found the most amazing machine at the Glasgow airport: it sells BOOKS!!!! I bought the Pirates of the Caribbean "At World's End" for only 4 pounds - $8! Not bad at all. And the highlight of flying so far is this: we had a small plane to Dublin, so it didn't pull up to the gate. We walked out to it and climbed the stairs!!!! And I felt like when I got back off the plane in Dublin I should stop at the top and wave....to nobody. It was sooooo cool!

Our hotel in Dublin is very nice - and all of the front desk people are fantastic. They're great at giving directions and telling us about the best places to go. Unfortunately the woman I asked about using room phones last night had NO IDEA if there's a charge. I assume there is since I only dial 9 and then the number so I'm not using a phone card.

Yesterday we took a tour to the Hill of Tara and Newgrange, with a very active tour guide named Mary Gibbons. I LOVED being out in the middle of nowhere. It's what I pictured about Ireland. The Hill of Tara (along with just about every other site we've visited) is a World Heritage Site because it hosted 150 coronations and was the burial site of lots of important people. The scenery is stunning!!! The sheep poop is not. 😊

Newgrange is the biggest of the main 3 religious burial hills in County Meade. Within a few square miles there are 40 burials like it, but none of the same magnitude! We got to go inside in small groups to see how cramped and dark it can be, and then our tour guide turned off the main lights and turned on one specific light that mimicked the sun - so we got to see what it would look like every year around December 21st as the sun shone directly in it's own little window and lit up the chamber to take away the spirits of the dead to the next realm. Also very cool. We walked around the outside and tooks millions of pictures when the sun came out. It was perfect timing...

I've been invited to a grocery-store dinner now so I need to wrap up momentarily. We'll eat back at the hotel and then dress up and go out to the Temple Bar where they have FANTASTIC nightly bands. 😊

Love!

---